Why Understanding Startups as Customers is the Key to Winning in BizDev
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INTERVIEWER
Generally, someone at your level as they prep for a new uh loop at a company, uh, good hygiene would be to spend time um learning as much as you can about the target customers if you're not already in that space, right? Um, you've had some crossover with what you're being asked to look out for this role, so that's, that's healthy, but, you know, maybe you've done some extra, extra learning. Either way, uh, immaterial, the question still stands, which is Um, what is the most interesting thing, and, and I'm gonna use specifically startups, as, as a customer, right, start-up companies. What is the most interesting thing that you've learned? About startups as customers in the last 24 months. It's a perfectly vague and open ended question, but it's, you know, what is the most you've learned?
CANDIDATE
Do I answer that as a star or do I answer that as like? A a general discussion. Like when you ask that, do I put in the method like, OK, so let me tell you the time like I work with the customer.
INTERVIEWER
No, I mean, certainly there's there's a star element to it. Sure, fine, that's a good framework, but this is, this is a, let's talk about the most interesting thing you've learned, right? I'm, I'm trying to understand. Um, What what you've learned and, and by proxy your process, the why, you know, how deep did you go, etc.
CANDIDATE
Yeah, that's a good question. So what I've learned from startups, um, that I now um now that I lead a team of engineers, um, are 5 things, actually 4 things. Um, the first thing is when you work with a startup, um. There are two types of startups that I work with. One, that want to work with the government and two that don't want to work with the government. Um, and in order to evaluate that, um, what I asked, um, what I've learned is I built a process, um, where the first thing I do is before approaching a startup, understand our customers' need for the technology. Um, and so I work with our customer and understand what is the mission, what is the tech that you're doing
INTERVIEWER
just for my so I can keep track of the thread when you're using the word customer here, are you talking about the SIS or are you talking about the startups when you specifically use that word customer?
CANDIDATE
And you tell customer is the intelligence community, so you can have the agent uh when I use the word startup, we're gonna use startup, you can say startup is an internal customer, but thank you. So the first thing is startups, um. Uh, what I've learned there are starters that want to work with customers and um there's starts that don't want to work with the customer. Got it. First thing I want to do is understand the technology or the need for a customer and so before I approach a startup about what the need is, that gives me an understanding of how to base that conversation with that startup, whether they want to work with them or not. Um, the next thing I do is work with understand the startup process. How do you work? Every startup is different. Um, you have a 4 man startup that started out of a garage or you have a 1000 man startup that's well, you know, they're well established, um, and they're ready to be acquired, and so I have to understand how do they work, um, and are they gonna be able to meet the needs of our customers. Um, the next thing I've learned is, um. When the contract has been executed, you bring in the startup twice in the whole program or what we call a work program, which lasts about 1 to 2 years. Uh, work program is essentially the startup developing the technology for the customer. Um, and what I, the rule that I have is I bring in the startup or engage the startup twice, um, it's called the Paretaro, um, when it, when they're, when you're done with 20% of design and when they're done with 80% of design, and the reason I do that is things are always changing, the customer's needs are changing and the technology or the team or the process of the startup is. Working with that changes, so at the 20% mark, it tells me what are they doing and how are they gonna do it. This helps me switch gears now that I know the customer's needs, um, and I know how the starts process is working at the 20% mark, I know that have they pivoted or have the need of the customer changed. Then at the 80% mark when the startup is almost ready to be done, I'd like to bring the customer and the startup back in the room and say before they final design, are your needs still met and start up, uh, is your process or tech still gonna satisfy the needs of our customer? Um, when I, after those two meetings, the fourth thing I do is, um, I ask my engineers to evaluate the tech before we deliver it. Um, our whole, uh, mission at Intel is to make sure that, uh, we are satisfying the needs of our customers by balance the success of our startups and so what I do is, um. In delivering, uh, before we deliver the product to our customer, I make sure that the engineer. I know it sounds funny break the product. I want them to go through a rigorous testing and make sure that the startups, uh, technology will meet the customer's needs. Um, after going through those four steps, the fifth thing I do is, um, ask the customer if, um, there's after they're evaluating the tool to make sure if there's any, uh, support that we can do and provide. So those are the 5 things I've learned to help, um, that I've learned about startups in the last 24 months to make them successful to meet the needs of our customers.
INTERVIEWER
So generally when I ask that question, I get one answer, not 4 or 5, but, uh, it's fine. uh, walk me through why you found it, you could pick any one of these. Why did you find this the most interesting thing to, to talk about in the context of this answer?
CANDIDATE
Not all, not all startups work like, everyone has their own style, you know, and their own bearing. What um what was interesting is that it's you you have a startup that your own way of working and then you have a customer that has their own ways of processing. The cultures are completely different. In a typical meeting you'd laugh that on one side of the room you'll have folks wearing Hawaiian t-shirts, cargo shorts, and a flip flop. On the other side of the meeting, you'll have suits and ties. You're trying to come up with synergy. The interesting thing I've learned is there's got to be a framework that both sides can understand that's not rigid for our startup but has enough detail to satisfy the customer of the tools.
INTERVIEWER
OK. So with that in mind, right, there's this, this, we'll call it the healthy tension. Um, In terms of how these two entities present themselves, which I'm well aware of and well versed in. Um, if you had a free hand. In designing an ideal interaction model between the two, where would you start?
CANDIDATE
If I had a free hand and if you could
INTERVIEWER
define the rules of engagement for these guys coming together, right, it's, you know, I'm gonna use one that you can't use now, but I guess you can, but you know, you can't wear suits, you can't wear flip flops. So we must, you know, we got to meet it in and out because it's less, you know, whatever. But if you had a free hand in designing. Uh, the interaction model, where, where would you start?
CANDIDATE
Upfront agreement of The requirements. What are the requirements of the recipe for um building the tool to meet the customer's needs. You don't always have the right people in the room when they're agreeing on requirements. You might have a CEO that doesn't know that's now. Displaced from the core tech because he's busy raising funds and you might have a customer that has the money to invest in a startup but not know the technological needs. Having the right technical folks in the room to agree on requirements would help upfront would help alleviate the downstream issues that we usually face um in the organization. OK.
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